There are a number of treatments for the last. I already use melatonin. I sort of have light therapy from a full-spectrum fluorescent desk lamp. But I get very little sunlight; the surprising thing would be if I didn’t have a vitamin D deficiency. And vitamin D deficiencies have been linked with all sorts of interesting things like near-sightedness, with time outdoors inversely correlating with myopia and not reading or near-work time. (It has been claimed that caffeine interferes with vitamin D absorption and so people like me especially need to take vitamin D, on top of the deficits caused by our vampiric habits, but I don’t think this is true35.) Unfortunately, there’s not very good evidence that vitamin D supplementation helps with mood/SAD/depression: there’s ~6 small RCTs with some findings of benefits, with their respective meta-analysis turning in a positive but currently non-statistically-significant result. Better confirmed is reducing all-cause mortality in elderly people (see, in order of increasing comprehensiveness: Evidence Syntheses 2013, Chung et al 2009, Autier & Gandini 2007, Bolland et al 2014).
Starting from the studies in my meta-analysis, we can try to estimate an upper bound on how big any effect would be, if it actually existed. One of the most promising null results, Southon et al 1994, turns out to be not very informative: if we punch in the number of kids, we find that they needed a large effect size (d=0.81) before they could see anything:

…researchers have added a new layer to the smart pill conversation. Adderall, they’ve found, makes you think you’re doing better than you actually are….Those subjects who had been given Adderall were significantly more likely to report that the pill had caused them to do a better job….But the results of the new University of Pennsylvania study, funded by the U.S. Navy and not yet published but presented at the annual Society for Neuroscience conference last month, are consistent with much of the existing research. As a group, no overall statistically-significant improvement or impairment was seen as a result of taking Adderall. The research team tested 47 subjects, all in their 20s, all without a diagnosis of ADHD, on a variety of cognitive functions, from working memory-how much information they could keep in mind and manipulate-to raw intelligence, to memories for specific events and faces….The last question they asked their subjects was: How and how much did the pill influence your performance on today’s tests? Those subjects who had been given Adderall were significantly more likely to report that the pill had caused them to do a better job on the tasks they’d been given, even though their performance did not show an improvement over that of those who had taken the placebo. According to Irena Ilieva…it’s the first time since the 1960s that a study on the effects of amphetamine, a close cousin of Adderall, has asked how subjects perceive the effect of the drug on their performance.

The final question is: since I was taking an overdose, how did I mess up? I thought I was making sure I got at least the right RDA of elemental magnesium by aiming for 800mg of elemental magnesium and carefully converting from raw powder weight. So I went back to the original references, and scrutinizing them closely, they really were talking about elemental magnesium and indicating I should be getting 400mg elemental a day, but I did notice something: I got the dose wrong for the Solgar pills, it wasn’t 800mg elemental, it was 800mg of citrate - I misread the label. So I went from taking ~130mg of elemental magnesium in the first period to ~800mg in the second; I don’t think it is an accident that the second period seems to have been much worse (between the plot and the time trend).
This calculation - reaping only \frac{7}{9} of the naive expectation - gives one pause. How serious is the sleep rebound? In another article, I point to a mice study that sleep deficits can take 28 days to repay. What if the gain from modafinil is entirely wiped out by repayment and all it did was defer sleep? Would that render modafinil a waste of money? Perhaps. Thinking on it, I believe deferring sleep is of some value, but I cannot decide whether it is a net profit.
With just 16 predictions, I can’t simply bin the predictions and say yep, that looks good. Instead, we can treat each prediction as equivalent to a bet and see what my winnings (or losses) were; the standard such proper scoring rule is the logarithmic rule which pretty simple: you earn the logarithm of the probability if you were right, and the logarithm of the negation if you were wrong; he who racks up the fewest negative points wins. We feed in a list and get back a number:

My first dose on 1 March 2017, at the recommended 0.5ml/1.5mg was miserable, as I felt like I had the flu and had to nap for several hours before I felt well again, requiring 6h to return to normal; after waiting a month, I tried again, but after a week of daily dosing in May, I noticed no benefits; I tried increasing to 3x1.5mg but this immediately caused another afternoon crash/nap on 18 May. So I scrapped my cytisine. Oh well.

Following up on the promising but unrandomized pilot, I began randomizing my LLLT usage since I worried that more productive days were causing use rather than vice-versa. I began on 2 August 2014, and the last day was 3 March 2015 (n=167); this was twice the sample size I thought I needed, and I stopped, as before, as part of cleaning up (I wanted to know whether to get rid of it or not). The procedure was simple: by noon, I flipped a bit and either did or did not use my LED device; if I was distracted or didn’t get around to randomization by noon, I skipped the day. This was an unblinded experiment because finding a randomized on/off switch is tricky/expensive and it was easier to just start the experiment already. The question is simple too: controlling for the simultaneous blind magnesium experiment & my rare nicotine use (I did not use modafinil during this period or anything else I expect to have major influence), is the pilot correlation of d=0.455 on my daily self-ratings borne out by the experiment?

A key ingredient of Noehr’s chemical “stack” is a stronger racetam called Phenylpiracetam. He adds a handful of other compounds considered to be mild cognitive enhancers. One supplement, L-theanine, a natural constituent in green tea, is claimed to neutralise the jittery side-effects of caffeine. Another supplement, choline, is said to be important for experiencing the full effects of racetams. Each nootropic is distinct and there can be a lot of variation in effect from person to person, says Lawler. Users semi-annonymously compare stacks and get advice from forums on sites such as Reddit. Noehr, who buys his powder in bulk and makes his own capsules, has been tweaking chemicals and quantities for about five years accumulating more than two dozens of jars of substances along the way. He says he meticulously researches anything he tries, buys only from trusted suppliers and even blind-tests the effects (he gets his fiancée to hand him either a real or inactive capsule).

Jump up ^ Weyandt LL, Oster DR, Marraccini ME, Gudmundsdottir BG, Munro BA, Zavras BM, Kuhar B (September 2014). "Pharmacological interventions for adolescents and adults with ADHD: stimulant and nonstimulant medications and misuse of prescription stimulants". Psychol. Res. Behav. Manag. 7: 223–249. doi:10.2147/PRBM.S47013. PMC 4164338. PMID 25228824.
Either prescription or illegal, daily use of testosterone would not be cheap. On the other hand, if I am one of the people for whom testosterone works very well, it would be even more valuable than modafinil, in which case it is well worth even arduous experimenting. Since I am on the fence on whether it would help, this suggests the value of information is high.
Nicotine absorption through the stomach is variable and relatively reduced in comparison with absorption via the buccal cavity and the small intestine. Drinking, eating, and swallowing of tobacco smoke by South American Indians have frequently been reported. Tenetehara shamans reach a state of tobacco narcosis through large swallows of smoke, and Tapirape shams are said to eat smoke by forcing down large gulps of smoke only to expel it again in a rapid sequence of belches. In general, swallowing of tobacco smoke is quite frequently likened to drinking. However, although the amounts of nicotine swallowed in this way - or in the form of saturated saliva or pipe juice - may be large enough to be behaviorally significant at normal levels of gastric pH, nicotine, like other weak bases, is not significantly absorbed.
With the new wave of mindful eating, I feel like we're getting a step closer to eliminate the "diet culture" that is constantly sending us messages that our bodies aren't enough, how we need to comply with certain beauty standards, and restrict ourselves from certain meals because they affect the way we look. An important shift needs to be made in the latter: we should pay attention to the way food makes us feel, not to the way it makes us look.
I noticed on SR something I had never seen before, an offer for 150mgx10 of Waklert for ฿13.47 (then, ฿1 = $3.14). I searched and it seemed Sun was somehow manufacturing armodafinil! Interesting. Maybe not cost-effective, but I tried out of curiosity. They look and are packaged the same as the Modalert, but at a higher price-point: 150 rather than 81 rupees. Not entirely sure how to use them: assuming quality is the same, 150mg Waklert is still 100mg less armodafinil than the 250mg Nuvigil pills.
2 commenters point out that my possible lack of result is due to my mistaken assumption that if nicotine is absorbable through skin, mouth, and lungs it ought to be perfectly fine to absorb it through my stomach by drinking it (rather than vaporizing it and breathing it with an e-cigarette machine) - it’s apparently known that absorption differs in the stomach.

The nootropic sulbutiamine, of the synthetic B-vitamin-derived nootropics family, is generally considered a low-risk supplement; however, some users have reported that the supplement has addictive qualities. While there is no firm evidence of sulbutiamine addiction, the risk may increase at high dosages. For instance, users who consume this supplement for 10 consecutive days may experience withdrawal for two to five days. There are also increased risks when sulbutiamine is taken with antipsychotic medications.[8]

Spaced repetition at midnight: 3.68. (Graphing preceding and following days: ▅▄▆▆▁▅▆▃▆▄█ ▄ ▂▄▄▅) DNB starting 12:55 AM: 30/34/41. Transcribed Sawaragi 2005, then took a walk. DNB starting 6:45 AM: 45/44/33. Decided to take a nap and then take half the armodafinil on awakening, before breakfast. I wound up oversleeping until noon (4:28); since it was so late, I took only half the armodafinil sublingually. I spent the afternoon learning how to do value of information calculations, and then carefully working through 8 or 9 examples for my various pages, which I published on Lesswrong. That was a useful little project. DNB starting 12:09 AM: 30/38/48. (To graph the preceding day and this night: ▇▂█▆▅▃▃▇▇▇▁▂▄ ▅▅▁▁▃▆) Nights: 9:13; 7:24; 9:13; 8:20; 8:31.

The NIDA research study focused on 10 healthy male participants. The men were subjected to two rounds of PET brain scans after consuming either Provigil (200 mg or 400 mg) or a placebo. The scans demonstrated that the Provigil users had an increase in the amount of dopamine in the brain. Dopamine is a key neurological messenger in the brain’s reward system. Cocaine and methamphetamine have a similar effect on the brain, but they are more potent and faster-acting than Provigil. As cocaine and amphetamines are addiction-forming, the reasoning here is that Provigil may also be addictive.

Now, what is the expected value (EV) of simply taking iodine, without the additional work of the experiment? 4 cans of 0.15mg x 200 is $20 for 2.1 years’ worth or ~$10 a year or a NPV cost of $205 (\frac{10}{\ln 1.05}) versus a 20% chance of $2000 or $400. So the expected value is greater than the NPV cost of taking it, so I should start taking iodine.
Or in other words, since the standard deviation of my previous self-ratings is 0.75 (see the Weather and my productivity data), a mean rating increase of >0.39 on the self-rating. This is, unfortunately, implying an extreme shift in my self-assessments (for example, 3s are ~50% of the self-ratings and 4s ~25%; to cause an increase of 0.25 while leaving 2s alone in a sample of 23 days, one would have to push 3s down to ~25% and 4s up to ~47%). So in advance, we can see that the weak plausible effects for Noopept are not going to be detected here at our usual statistical levels with just the sample I have (a more plausible experiment might use 178 pairs over a year, detecting down to d>=0.18). But if the sign is right, it might make Noopept worthwhile to investigate further. And the hardest part of this was just making the pills, so it’s not a waste of effort.
With just 16 predictions, I can’t simply bin the predictions and say yep, that looks good. Instead, we can treat each prediction as equivalent to a bet and see what my winnings (or losses) were; the standard such proper scoring rule is the logarithmic rule which pretty simple: you earn the logarithm of the probability if you were right, and the logarithm of the negation if you were wrong; he who racks up the fewest negative points wins. We feed in a list and get back a number:
Last summer, I visited Phillips in the high desert resort town of Bend, Oregon, where he lives with his wife, Kathleen, and their two daughters, Ivy and Ruby. Phillips, who is now 36, took me for coffee at a cheery café called Thump. Wearing shorts, flip-flops and a black T-shirt, he said: "Poker is about sitting in one place, watching your opponents for a long time, and making better observations about them than they make about you." With Provigil, he "could process all the information about what was going on at the table and do something about it". Though there is no question that Phillips became much more successful at poker after taking neuroenhancers, I asked him if his improvement could be explained by a placebo effect, or by coincidence. He doubted it, but allowed that it could. Still, he said, "there's a sort of clarity I get with Provigil. With Adderall, I'd characterise the effect as correction - correction of an underlying condition. Provigil feels like enhancement." And, whereas Adderall made him "jittery", Provigil's effects were "completely limited to my brain". He had "zero difficulty sleeping".
In general, I feel a little bit less alert, but still close to normal. By 6PM, I have a mild headache, but I try out 30 rounds of gbrainy (haven’t played it in months) and am surprised to find that I reach an all-time high; no idea whether this is due to DNB or not, since Gbrainy is very heavily crystallized (half the challenge disappears as you learn how the problems work), but it does indicate I’m not deluding myself about mental ability. (To give a figure: my last score well before I did any DNB was 64, and I was doing well that day; on modafinil, I had a 77.) I figure the headache might be food related, eat, and by 7:30 the headache is pretty much gone and I’m fine up to midnight.
To our Brainfood students and youth supporters: It’s your potential that inspired us, your laughter that sustained us, your incredible talent that challenged us to dig deep and build programs that you deserve. Whether you were with us for one year or one week, know that there’s probably a Brainfood staffer who has bragged about how awesome you are. We hope that what you learned in Brainfood sticks with you, even if it’s just using that pumpkin chocolate chip muffin recipe to make someone’s day a little brighter. You’ve given us hope and made us so very proud. Thank you. Now go out there, get what’s yours, and bless the world with your many, many talents.
Celastrus paniculatus, also known as the Intellect Tree, is perhaps one of the more interesting Ayurvedic medicinal plants that has been used for thousands of years, and one that I personally use quite frequently as part of the supplement “Qualia Mind”. In the Ayurvedic tradition, oil derived from C. paniculatus (Malkanguni oil) is used to enhance memory and intellectual capacity, as well as to improve dream recall and induce lucid dreams. In a study performed on healthy rats, the oil was shown to improve 24-hour memory retention after a single dose, an effect accompanied by a reduction in monoamines like norepinephrine, dopamine and serotonin, indicating a decreased turnover of these neurotransmitters which, in turn, may aid in reducing conditions like depression. In another study with rats, C. paniculatus oil administered for 14 days reversed stress-induced spatial learning and memory impairment and restored working memory. In mice with scopolamine-induced memory deficits, the oil has been shown to improve both spatial and fear memory (a type of fear conditioning through which an organism learns to avoid detrimental situations or events). Traditionally, is taken in seed form, starting with 10 seeds and working up to 15 and finally 20 seeds.
Celastrus paniculatus, also known as the Intellect Tree, is perhaps one of the more interesting Ayurvedic medicinal plants that has been used for thousands of years, and one that I personally use quite frequently as part of the supplement “Qualia Mind”. In the Ayurvedic tradition, oil derived from C. paniculatus (Malkanguni oil) is used to enhance memory and intellectual capacity, as well as to improve dream recall and induce lucid dreams. In a study performed on healthy rats, the oil was shown to improve 24-hour memory retention after a single dose, an effect accompanied by a reduction in monoamines like norepinephrine, dopamine and serotonin, indicating a decreased turnover of these neurotransmitters which, in turn, may aid in reducing conditions like depression. In another study with rats, C. paniculatus oil administered for 14 days reversed stress-induced spatial learning and memory impairment and restored working memory. In mice with scopolamine-induced memory deficits, the oil has been shown to improve both spatial and fear memory (a type of fear conditioning through which an organism learns to avoid detrimental situations or events). Traditionally, is taken in seed form, starting with 10 seeds and working up to 15 and finally 20 seeds.

To our Brainfood students and youth supporters: It’s your potential that inspired us, your laughter that sustained us, your incredible talent that challenged us to dig deep and build programs that you deserve. Whether you were with us for one year or one week, know that there’s probably a Brainfood staffer who has bragged about how awesome you are. We hope that what you learned in Brainfood sticks with you, even if it’s just using that pumpkin chocolate chip muffin recipe to make someone’s day a little brighter. You’ve given us hope and made us so very proud. Thank you. Now go out there, get what’s yours, and bless the world with your many, many talents.

There are a number of smart drugs on the market, the most well-known of which are probably Adderall and Ritalin. Both are technically known as psychostimulants, which means that they stimulate increased activity of the central nervous system: the brain and spinal cord. There are also two other common smart drugs, specifically Modafinil and a class of something called “ampakines”. You’re about to learn how each of them works and the benefits and potential risks therein.
To our Brainfood students and youth supporters: It’s your potential that inspired us, your laughter that sustained us, your incredible talent that challenged us to dig deep and build programs that you deserve. Whether you were with us for one year or one week, know that there’s probably a Brainfood staffer who has bragged about how awesome you are. We hope that what you learned in Brainfood sticks with you, even if it’s just using that pumpkin chocolate chip muffin recipe to make someone’s day a little brighter. You’ve given us hope and made us so very proud. Thank you. Now go out there, get what’s yours, and bless the world with your many, many talents.

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The general cost of fish oil made me interested in possible substitutes. Seth Roberts uses exclusively flaxseed oil or flaxseed meal, and this seems to work well for him with subjective effects (eg. noticing his Chinese brands seemed to not work, possibly because they were unrefrigerated and slightly rancid). It’s been studied much less than fish oil, but omega acids are confusing enough in general (is there a right ratio? McCluskey’s roundup gives the impression claims about ratios may have been overstated) that I’m not convinced ALA is a much inferior replacement for fish oil’s mixes of EPA & DHA.
Jump up ^ Greely, Henry; Sahakian, Barbara; Harris, John; Kessler, Ronald C.; Gazzaniga, Michael; Campbell, Philip; Farah, Martha J. (December 10, 2008). "Towards responsible use of cognitive-enhancing drugs by the healthy". Nature. Nature Publishing Group. 456 (7223): 702–705. Bibcode:2008Natur.456..702G. doi:10.1038/456702a. ISSN 1476-4687. OCLC 01586310. PMID 19060880. Retrieved March 25, 2014. (Subscription required (help)).